04 November 2006

This is possibly the lamest headline I've ever read.

Wow, the Internet sure is handy.

Wow, that's a crappy headline.

If this flyer had come from some small business where I would have expected the copy to be written by a non-copywriter, I might not even have noticed it. But this came from Staples, number 137 on this year's Fortune 500 list. Not only does Staples employ an advertising agency, it has an in-house creative department that includes a staff of seasoned copywriters.

So where did this goddawful headline come from?

I can think of three possibilities -- none of which should be an acceptable scenario. Here they are in no particular order:

1. The creative strategy was to convey the message that Staples has made the Internet a handy resource and some literal-minded marketing type who out-ranked the creative team forced this lame headline into production. (Any creative who's ever worked in an ad agency has lived through this scenario.)

2. For some reason, what should have been a fairly minor project turned into the job from hell and the poor copywriter -- beaten, bedraggled and bullsh-t -- gave up and did what he/she had to do to get this albatross off his/her desk. (Sad to say, we've all been there, too.)

3. All the writers considered this flyer to be an assignment beneath their dignity and it was assigned to an unsupervised intern or the marketing geek just went ahead and wrote it himself/herself. (This happens in agencies with an overabundance of egos.)